New projections forecasting a 35% rise in the prison population over the next decade are "troubling" and "sad", but reflect damaging policy choices, a leading criminal justice author says.
Asher Emanuel, who spent nearly two years following men caught in the justice system for his book The Valley: Crime and Punishment in a New Zealand City, made the comments to on Q+A while discussing new Justice Ministry projections.
The forecasts predict the total prison population will rise 35% over the next decade — a 7% increase on last year's forecast - while the remand population would grow 48%.
Emanuel said the numbers, while alarming, were part of a long-running trajectory.
He noted that in 1987 the prison population sat at just 3100 people, climbing to 8500 by late 2020, with the rate of imprisonment more than doubling over that period.
"That's the result of deliberate policy decisions," he said. "And so the decisions which are feeding into these projections are, in that sense, more of the same."
He said there was no quick fix to be found inside the criminal justice system, and falling prison numbers will only follow major changes to housing, health and employment.
"The criminal justice system, it doesn't stop at the courtroom door... These numbers are symptomatic of crises which are happening in other parts of New Zealand life."
He described one of the men he followed for his book, Rikihana, who was often homeless and at times held in custody rather than released because he had no suitable address.
Emanuel said the men he followed lived lives characterised by "unmet needs", leaving them unable to break the cycle of returning to prison.
"The solutions are to do with having adequate and available housing, to do with having a health system which is making mental health treatment and addiction treatment available to people who need it, to have good work and training and education," he said.
He said the reason politicians reach for "low-hanging fruit" instead is that real change involves "very big political conflicts to do with the distribution of resources in our country" - conflicts he described as "possibly overwhelming and frightening".
Emanuel said conditions on remand were often worse than for sentenced prisoners, with remand inmates frequently defaulting to high-security classification - meaning less unlocked time and fewer programmes.
On who benefits from the current system, he said politicians found it cheap to "beat the drum about law and order" compared with funding social policy.
"It's a way, I think sometimes, of looking like you're doing something, even though what you're actually doing is writing an enormous cheque for a future government and for the community in terms of the consequences of greater levels of incarceration."
For the full interview, watch the video above
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air
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